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Maple brought us together through sedatives and unholy levels of libido, but we’re the ones who’ll hold the line.

We’re not just surviving anymore.

We’re preparing for war.

We’re building something.

By the time morning nears, we’ve got a plan drawn up, nothing fancy, not yet, but it’s tight enough to hold. Rotations. Patrols. Reinforcement routes. Inventory lists. Everyone’s assigned, and no one argued. Even Dean, though he grumbled about his new title of “Nighttime Chicken Enclosure Supervisor,” which Wade gave him after Evan teased him about losing a standoff with one of the feathered bastards yesterday.

Dean swore it was a tactical retreat.

Once it’s all sketched out, once the grit and gears of survival settle back into place, we make breakfast.

Not because anyone said to. Not because it was planned. Just because it felt like the next right thing to do. A thank you. A show of loyalty. Or maybe just a peace offering from a pack of violent men to the woman who somehow made us a family.

Evan takes point on the eggs. Doesn’t say a word, just rolls up his sleeves and gets to work like he’s in an OR cracking ribs instead of a kitchen cracking shells.

Wade’s already got bacon going, laid flat and neat and flipped with the kind of precision that only comes from loving something enough to get it just right.

Dean raids the pantry like a man possessed. Comes out grinning with frosted cherry Pop-Tarts and announces he’s buttering them ‘because he read once on the internet it makes them slutty.’ Then proceeds to make us all try one, eyes wide and wild like he’s invented flavor itself.

“It’s crispy on the outside and smooth on the inside,” he says, already licking melted frosting off his thumb. “Like sex. In a sad, desperate, childhood-regression sort of way.”

I hate to admit it, but the damn thing is good.

Even Brock mutters, “We need more of these,” like he’s just discovered the true cost of the apocalypse wasn’t water or antibiotics, it was frosted pastries.

Dean points his butter knife like a general giving orders. “We raid corner stores after perimeter drills. Priority one: cherry. But I’ll accept brown sugar in a pinch. Frosted. Keep it fancy. I’m not a savage.”

Wade snorts. Evan doesn’t even argue. And me?

I just pour the coffee and listen to them banter, the weight in my chest lighter than it’s been in years.

We might not make the fluffiest eggs or fold the napkins the way Maple does, but when she wakes up to the smell of bacon and chaos and half-dressed men plotting a pastry heist just for her?

She’ll smile.

And that’s enough.

God help anyone who thinks they can take this from us.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Maple

The first thing I register is warmth. Low and slow like a sunbeam across my stomach, like I’ve been sleeping for a century in a post-orgasmic haze, limbs too heavy to move, body still buzzing from a man who used it like a sermon.

Then I shift, or try to, and my wrist tugs.

I hear metal on metal. That sound is burned into my soul now.

I crack one eye open and blink up at the ceiling.

Huh. Not my ceiling.

Not my bed, either.

Memories come rolling in from the night before. Holden.